It was hard watching what was happening to her on the screen.

Every cell in my body wanted me to get the fuck out of the room and into the Mansion. My body twitched in protest, telling me to go and get her. But I forced myself to stay rooted to the spot, and because I was a fucking masochist, I made myself watch the screen as well.

He knew not to mistreat her, yet he’d done so twice in that room alone. I could only imagine how off the rails Ellis would go if he got a taste of her sweet virgin pussy. I would have to keep him grounded. She didn’t belong to him, and never would. Her future master had been the reason she was brought into the Mansion in the first place. And that master was me.

I remembered taking Harlow in that alley. Sticking the needle in her neck and watching her go down, dropping the rose I’d sent her as a little reminder of whom she belonged to before I finally ripped her away from the life she knew so well. Before I started working her to her full potential, giving her a reason to live, a reason to breathe. She would be such a beautiful slave once she was fully trained. I’d hired only the best men to do it.

I had my doubts about Ellis. He’d been working for us since he was a kid, a restless and reckless as fuck youth who would have done anything, fucked over anyone, for a five-dollar bill. But I taught him how to behave. How to hold the deeply rooted anger he felt inside and unleash it only when the opportunity was right. I raised Ellis into the man he was today, and I knew I wanted him to work out her kinks for me.

There had always been the option of me training her myself. Yet I decided against it, unable to face the training process and be disappointed yet again. I wasn’t sure whether she would stay with me forever yet. All I knew was that I was compelled by her striking beauty, by her firecracker personality, and most of all, by the way she danced.

I’d seen the Nutcracker the night I took her, and her dance was glorious.

I’d never been much for the visual arts, let alone dancing. But to see Harlow Granger on the stage, when she was in her element, in the zone, was an absolute treat. I had no doubt she would be feted by the community. That she would gain countless fans and admirers along the way. It was hard not to fall in love with what she displayed when she stood center stage. The incredible range of emotions she managed to show with her body. The way her legs and arms and torso twisted, danced, twirled. She was incredible. And when I saw something as beautiful as she was, I had to keep it. Take it. Treasure it. Steal it.

I was a collector, always had been, since I was a little boy. I saw beautiful things and I took them away from where they grew and prospered. It was the case with Harlow, and it had been the case with my very first rose.

I still remembered wandering into the gardens when I was a little boy. How fascinated I’d been by the beautiful trellis of climbing, velvety red roses. So entranced I had to take one, cut it down with my pocket knife and hold its trembling dew-covered petals between my fingers.

I’d been punished for it harshly. When my father found out, he decided to teach me a lesson. He worked as a gardener for a rich man, and if the man found out the gardener’s kid was going around stealing his property, we’d both be punished. That is what my father explained to me calmly before he gave me ten lashes of the whip they used with the horses. I still bore the marks, the scars the whip had carved into my back.

The rose, I was allowed to keep. My father deemed it would be important for me to remember the lesson I’d gotten that night in the barn. So I’d kept it. But instead of drying it like my father had imagined, I’d become entranced by the idea of keeping the fragile flower alive. I tried so many ways of keeping it from wilting. Kept trying. I still had the rose. It was nowhere near as beautiful as it had been on the day I stole it almost thirty years ago. Yet it symbolized a tortured part of my past I couldn’t bring myself to let go of.

In a lot of ways, Harlow reminded me of that rose. I’d always been fascinated by the luscious flowers, ever since that moment of seeing the sunlight peeking through the trellis, illuminating the heads of the crimson red flowers. Harlow had stood out just like that, and when I saw her for the very first time, I knew I would once keep her for myself. That night when she danced in the Nutcracker had been a rash decision. It would have probably been best for me to stay away, so no one would connect me with the girl or recognize my face. Yet I needed to see her dance. And I wasn’t fucking disappointed.

Now, I watched her on her knees, submitting to a man whom I’d practically raised like a kid brother. I watched her crying openly, her expertly applied makeup running down her pretty face in black streaks. Her lipstick was smudged from where Ellis had forced his fingers into her mouth, and she looked tired, her eyes red-rimmed and filled with terror.

I didn’t want to cause the girl harm. My goal wasn’t to damage her permanently. Just train her into the perfect little whore, who would come to me willingly and be desperate for me, her new owner. I wanted someone to break her into the woman I wanted first. And then I would continue to do the job until she was in pieces.

“Deep in thought?”

I turned around at the sound of my voice, my vision darkening when I noticed I had a visitor.

The REC room was off limits to most of my employees. It was a room covered in screens, with one large one dominating the space. I was watching the room Harlow was in from every angle. I didn’t want to have company while I was doing it, and the mere fact she’d deemed it acceptable to join me in the room annoyed me.

“What are you doing here?” I asked coldly.

“Seeing if you’d like anything,” she whispered, stepping next to me and leaving a fleeting kiss on my cheek.

A kiss that might have destroyed me years ago but left me cold in the presence of Harlow Granger, my new obsession suffering so beautifully on the big screen.

“I’m fine,” I replied dismissively, my attention back on the big screen. Suddenly, I decided I wanted her input. Maybe she would have an opinion on Harlow. “What do you think of her? Is she cut out for this?”

She stepped closer to the screen until her nose was almost touching the pixels of Harlow sobbing softly on the floor as Ellis stripped in front of her. It was hard to watch, yet I found myself unable to tear my eyes away from what was happening in front of me. She was such a beautiful mess. I couldn’t wait to taste those pretty tears on my own tongue, though it would be a while yet.

“She’s scared,” she muttered, her finger trailing Harlow’s features on the screen. “Can’t you tell?”

“Of course I can,” I replied sharply. “She should be. It’s her first fucking day.”

She glanced at me over her shoulder, her smile sly.

“I was scared on my first day,” she said softly. “Do you remember?”

She approached me, her fingers twirling around my collar, smoothing out the fabric. I snatched her hand in mine and glared at her.

“You need to remember your place,” I growled at her. “Or do I need to remind you what you are in this house?”

“Maybe,” she whispered, her voice heavily accented, just like it always was when she got aroused.

I turned her around, her back trembling against my chest as I gripped her by the throat.

“You’re nothing but a plaything,” I told her darkly. “A toy for my men to play with. I could have all of them on you at once if I decided that’s what I wanted. You know that, don’t you? It’s what you’re so fucking scared of… Yet so desperate for, you’re dripping down your legs as we speak.”

She whimpered. I didn’t even need to check if I was right, her moans spoke of it themselves. I wasn’t going to start playing her wicked games again, anyway. Not by a longshot – I was done with her and the sweet fucked-upness of her twisted mind. I’d only met one person who could match my own kind of crazy – and it was her. Together, we were an unstoppable force. But we were also a tornado of insanity, of mindless self-indulgence and the need to ruin everything we touched.

I’d hurt her enough, and she’d messed with my head enough for one lifetime. I was done dipping my dick in crazy.

“I hope you do,” she whispered against my fingers around her neck. “I hope you make them all fuck me… Like you used to, do you remember?”

How could I forget? Days of pure carnal pleasure, of satisfying every need my body had with hers and using her to get myself off, in any way I saw fit. She’d been my slave once. Now, there was nothing but contempt for her in my heart, contempt, and a peculiar kind of gentle curiosity, which sometimes piqued my interest.

But I was done again, and I let her go. She choked and sputtered as she moved back towards the screen, pointing towards the girl suffering on her knees.

“You’re doing it to her,” she snarled. “Don’t think it makes you any less of a monster just because you’re not the one doing it.”

She was right. I was still the same, fucked-up me I’d always been. Perhaps I was even worse now, since I was letting others do my dirty work.

Someone once told me you had to break a bird’s wings to make it stay a beautiful captive, singing its song of sorrow in a pretty gilded cage. Yet wasn’t I taking the coward’s way out by not clipping the bird’s wings myself?

I hated that she was right, and I refused to acknowledge her words. Instead, I turned back to the screen and stared at my pretty girl’s mouth being raped.

Because that was what Ellis was doing. What he’d been instructed to do. To break her by taking her clit and her ass and her mouth, but leaving her pretty virgin pussy untouched for me. I may have been a monster, but even I couldn’t deny myself the simple pleasure of her first time. I needed to be the one to do it. I knew her training would be harder with that tight cunt being off limits, but it was the order I gave, and I was planning on sticking to it.

“She is a beautiful girl,” she remarked, a hint of jealousy in her voice. “Is she going to be your only one?”

She knew of my habit to only keep one girl at a time. Currently, I didn’t have anyone. I had been without a slave for almost a year, ever since I’d visited pretty little Harlow in her apartment and gotten a consolation prize – a lock of her pretty blonde hair that I kept in my breast pocket.

“You don’t get to ask questions,” I told her. “And, in fact, it’s time for you to go.”

She glared at me as I grabbed her wrist and forced her towards the exit.

“She doesn’t even know you, Thorn,” she spat out at me. “How are you going to make her love you when she doesn’t even know she’s here for you?”

“You leave that up to me, Pia,” I snarled back, shutting the door firmly behind her.

But the thought lingered, and the question imprinted itself on my mind.

My obsession with making her love me… it was insane. It was the desire of a madman, yet one I couldn’t let go of. Usually I didn’t give a shit if my submissives gave a fuck about me in the romantic sense, but ever since I’d met her, the thought of making Harlow Granger fall for me persisted, making me do rash things I would come to regret in the future.

Yet I couldn’t stop myself.

I knew the only way I would truly own her was to make her fall in love.

And I would stop at nothing until I saw the look of pure adoration in her pretty young face.